Ethan awoke with a start. The dream had been all too real. The dream in which she lay in his arms and kissed him with heightening passion. So real that he felt her breath on his face, and the soft, pliant warmth of her body against his, smelled her deep, warm sweetness.
And then she was gone. Vanished. As if he had fantasized her from the very outset.
Lying on the floor, a jumble of blankets in his arms, he inhaled deeply to quiet his racing heart.
In the predawn silence, something moved with a furtive quickness across the floor. As awareness slowly dawned on his sluggish senses, he sat up to see the door flung open. A pale light flooded the room.
He sat up quickly. “Zara…?” His sleep-muffled voice barely carried in the morning hush.
She stood framed by the doorway, her slender form dark against a beam of misty haze, her hand on the latch.
“Zara, don’t go!”
She turned slowly to look back over her shoulder, her eyes a dull glimmer in the shadows of her face. Pausing for an instant, as if to consider his entreaty, she seemed to resist the urge to turn fully. Then, without a word, she raced out into the morning mist.
“Please! Wait!” He wrestled to free himself from the tangle of blankets. It seemed to take forever to pull on his moccasins and make his way to the door. He glanced first one way then the other, before catching sight of her hurtling down the path through the trees. The morning brightened, flinty cold and ash grey.
“Zara!”
Without looking back, she hesitated and once more pressed on.
It didn’t take him long to overtake her. “What do you think you’re doing?”
Eyes focused straight ahead, she slowed her pace to a brisk walk as he drew alongside of her.
“Awkahtetyawh! Awtawteh!” She adjusted the burden strap supporting her pack, and further eased her stride. Her breath came in fitful gusts of steam.
“Why are you going?”
“Teyotawehyoawh!”
“Zara, I don’t want you to go!”
“Tewawkatawehyo nih!”
With an impulsive move, he grabbed her by the arms. In one swift motion, he forced her to stop and turned her to look at him. “Speak to me!” he shouted. “In words I can understand!”
Tears flooded her eyes. “Atka aw, Ethancaine,” she said softly and turned her head away. “Please…let me go.”
He gripped her more tightly. His hands trembled. “No, I can’t. Not like this.”
“Is best I go.”
“Best for you?”
She shook her head but did not speak.
“Not for me, Zara. Not for me. I…”
But he could not speak of his desires. He could not say what burned in his throat and caused his heart to race. He hardly recognized the powerful emotion swelling inside him. He could not give it a name…or, perhaps, he was afraid to acknowledge it. All he knew was that he would sooner die than let her out of his life.
“Listen!” She tugged away, her features strained as she concentrated all her attention.
A cold tingle raised the hairs on the back of his neck as the sound—a distant rumbling—impressed itself upon his senses. Instinctively, he knew what it was.
In an instant, he had her by the hand and began pulling her in a frantic effort to get her back up the path to the cabin.
“Go! Back to the house! Now!”
She turned to him with a look of panic and confusion. “But what—”
“Never mind! Just run. Fast!”
Awareness of the approaching danger flashed across her eyes and charged her into action. Casting off her pack, she fled.
Ethan followed more slowly at a distance, keeping sight of her all the while. He needed to think. He needed a plan! He needed to talk to them, convince them…of what? Of her innocence? At least he could hold them off for a while.
The sound of horses drew closer. Soon they would be upon him. At the moment Zara reached the safely of the cabin door, he looked back.
There were more of them this time. Ten, maybe twelve, riding hard up the path, two abreast into the clearing. It was foolish, he knew, but he armed himself with a heavy stick. Best be prepared, he mused, thumping the stick against his palm. He continued on toward the cabin at a moderate pace.
“Ethan!”
Sparks’ voice. Ethan chose not to respond and kept walking. Zara paused in the open doorway and motioned for him to hurry, a look of fear blanching her face.
“Go inside!” he shouted. “Bar the door! Do as I say!”
Five of them soon surrounded him. At Sparks’ command, they all dismounted.
“We’ve come for the woman. I have a warrant this time…for her arrest. I have a warrant for you too, Ethan.” Sparks pulled some papers from his coat pocket and waved them in the air.
“What’s the charge?”
“Don’t play the fool with me! You know as well as I what the charge is against you.” Sparks signaled to the others. “Otis, Jonathan!” Otis McLaren and a burly man Ethan didn’t know moved away from the group and approached the cabin. Both men had pistols in their belts. McLaren’s hand caressed the stock of his in a way that made Ethan’s heart lurch. “Break down the door,” Sparks continued. “If she resists, you know what to do.”
Ethan glanced around. The rest of the men stayed back, forming a barrier across the path.
“Wait!” Ethan lunged in a mad attempt to rush past the circle of men. They pressed tighter around him. One of them grabbed him from behind, restraining his arms. He struggled to free himself. “Call them back, Levi! We can talk. Let me talk to her. She doesn’t understand!”
Sparks signaled the men to release him. “All right, Ethan. I’ve got a proposal for you. Go in and talk to her. Convince her to come out with you, quiet-like, and I’ll see to it that nobody gets hurt.”
Ethan shot him an ironic smile. “Why, Levi, that’s a mighty attractive inducement!”
“We came to take her, Ethan, alive or dead. It’s one and the same to these men. We don’t aim to go back without her this time. Now, you can cooperate and make it easy on her…and yourself…or you can stand there and watch. It’s up to you.”
Ethan shoved his way past the men and regarded Sparks with narrow eyes. “You have no idea what you’re doing. She didn’t kill anyone!”
“That’s for the law to decide!”
“You, yourself, said she wouldn’t get a fair hearing.”
“It’s still the law, and I’m duty-bound to see it prosecuted! I have no choice, Ethan. Either you do as I ask, or we go in and take her by force.”
Ethan considered Sparks’ words. A plan had begun to form in his mind. “Very well, then. But I’ll need time to explain to her and gather up some of my things.”
“First give me your word, Ethan. I want your word of honour that you’ll play fair with me.”
Ethan glanced around at the twelve well-armed men, and took note of what he was up against. “What do you expect us to do? Fly away?”
“Your word, Ethan!”
He paused, and added in a low but steady voice, “I’ve always been fair with you, Levi.”
“Go on in, then. Do what you need to get her out.” Sparks gave a signal to the other men. “Surround the house,” he called out, and then turned to Ethan with a dark look. “I’m giving you five minutes. If you aren’t out in five minutes, we’re coming in for her.”
Ethan tossed the stick into the trees, and strode to the door. “Unbar the latch, Zara. I’m coming in alone.”
She had been waiting by the window, his rifle braced across her arm. Upon his return, she leaned it against the wall and stepped back as he replaced the bar. He didn’t bother to question if the weapon was charged or if she had intended to use it, or if she even knew how. He was only too thankful that she had seen fit to restrain herself.
“You heard what Sparks said.” Ethan dragged the table from its place, revealing a trap door in the floor. He threw open the hatch. “We have five minutes,” he explained, hurling the remaining bundle down into the cellar. He pulled on his jacket and buckled on his belt with knife sheath and hatchet. “That’s not a lot of time, but it’ll have to do. So you listen to me, and you heed what I say if you want to get out of here.”
While he spoke, he took a nearly full bottle of rum from the cupboard and poured a generous measure on the bed, dousing the pillows and blankets. “I want you to go down into the cellar. Go down there and wait for me. You hear?”
She nodded, watching with anxious eyes as he soaked the table and the curtains.
“Well, go on then! What are you waiting for?”
When she was safely down the ladder, he stoked up the fire until a small flicker danced among the embers. He kindled a pine twist torch, carried it to the bed, and touched the flame to the bedclothes. The blankets were soon burning. He went to the door and listened, slinging his shot pouch and powder horn over his shoulder.
“Your time’s almost up, Ethan!”
He ignited the curtains, the corn drying from the rafters, and tossed the pine twist into the woodpile. Satisfied that everything had caught, Ethan watched the flames quickly rise and spread to the walls, licking at the rafter beams, flaring up at the ceiling.
He sighed and closed his eyes, swallowing hard as the room filled with smoke and the sounds of the crackling blaze. Then, rifle in hand, he climbed down into the cellar, and closed the hatch.
Dark and cool, the cellar smelled of damp earth and mould. Making his way by memory, he skirted the barrels along the walls, and felt along the cleared passage toward the sound of Zara’s rapid breathing.
“Give me your hand.”
He pulled her close and buried his face in her hair.
What had he done? Dear God, there was nothing left. Nothing…save for a woman he feared and desired with every ounce of his being. A woman who clung to him, tremulous with fear. A woman as alone and friendless as he.
“Are you all right?” he whispered.
The rising sounds of the fire drowned out her reply.
“Come on. We can’t stay here.”
He gathered up the remaining parcel—some food and a blanket wrapped in sailcloth—and thrust it into her arms. “This way…”
She followed to the wall at the far end of the cellar. The roaring of the fire grew deafening above them. Smoke seeped through the floorboards and began to fill the space, bringing tears to his eyes, burning his throat. Zara coughed. Ethan felt with his hand along the stones until he found the rough wooden door. The hinges were rusted; he’d been meaning to replace them. They were stubborn, resisting his initial efforts, but gave with a groan as he pulled with all his might.
Needle shafts of morning light filtered through the portal atop a steep flight of stone steps, illuminating the narrow passage with beams of swirling dust motes. Ethan eased himself into the passage. Zara followed.
At the top of the stairs, he warily cracked open the door and peered outside. Through the curling billows of black smoke, he could see that the path through the trees was clear. He glanced up and around at his cabin, and a sharp pang of remorse stabbed him in the chest.
“Good God!” he groaned.
The conflagration was far more effective than he could have imagined, having spread quickly and voraciously, consuming the walls and roof in an inferno of flames. His second response was that of grim comfort. As he had hoped, chaos had erupted among the posse. Amid the fire’s din, horses screeched, men shouted, scrambling in a disarray to get clear of shooting flames and debris.
He tossed open the portal and crawled out, glancing around to assure himself that he remained undetected. Then he reached down to assist Zara.
“Keep low to the ground until we reach the trees,” he said, as she fixed on him with frightened eyes. “We’ll make a run for the river.” He cradled his rifle and made a dash for the path through the trees.
At last able to stop, Ethan gazed back in wonder at the carnage he had wrought. Atop the slope where his cabin had stood, a billowing black cloud smudged the sky. Orange tongues of flame shot up in angry flares above the treetops, spraying missiles of burning wreckage into the air like a fireworks display. He breathed deeply, partly to fill his lungs with fresh, clean air, and partly to alleviate the tension that had prevented him from breathing so easily. His legs felt weak. His stomach churned. And yet, his concern seemed insignificant compared to the terror in Zara’s eyes.
She stared as if riveted, a wide-eyed fixation that appeared focused on something far more ghastly residing in her mind. Pale and shivering, she seemed locked in a nightmare vision, of fires consuming more than just the simple, earthly possessions contained in his cabin.
He touched her shoulder and she turned her eyes on him—those frightened doe’s eyes that spoke more eloquently than words of a deep-seated sorrow and regret, of a fear that was no longer hers alone.
His heart swelled at the sight of her. He wanted to take her in her arms and hold her tight, to root out her fear and trembling. He wanted to shower her with his gratitude and his kisses, for he knew that he had done what was right…for both of them.
* * *
“Listen to me!” he was saying. “Listen carefully.”
Her mind swam in the turmoil of her thoughts. Fire meant the end of life as she had come to know it, death and destruction. Always it had been, for as long as she could remember. Fire meant terrible beginnings, being uprooted, being torn from the arms of those she loved and trusted. Fire meant deprivation, being forced to adapt to changes not always easy to bear.
As she watched the blaze, hearing the distant sounds of men’s shouting and confusion, images of long ago flooded her mind, filling her with a substantial fear. No longer just a hazy recollection, the fear rose like bile in her throat, choking her, stinging her eyes. It ripped through her, freezing up her blood. In her mind, she smelled the sulphur smoke of musket fire, heard the war whoops and the frightened cries of children.
Zara, run!
“Never mind that now. Come away.” Ethancaine gently grasped her wrist and hustled her down to the water’s edge.
“We don’t have much time. An hour…two, maybe more. Do you understand me? Soon as they discover we weren’t burned to cinders in there, they’ll be after us. I know these men. They’ll pick up our trail. Do you understand me?”
She nodded. His words blended in a jumble of urgent sounds with the confusion in her thoughts, but his face, pale and tense, held her attention.
“We’ll need to separate for a while…throw them off the trail.” His voice was soft, and strangely calm. She tried hard to attend. “Are you listening?”
His words went through her like a blast of winter wind. “You leave me?”
“Only for a short while.” He squatted down before her and scratched out his plan with a stick in the soft earth. “We’ll stay together until we reach the rapids. From there, I want you to continue following the river downstream. Stay on the rocks along the shoreline. It’ll be slow going, but you’ll be safe if you mind your step. I want to make it hard for them to pick up your trail. Do you understand?”
Again she nodded, squatting across from him to study the scratch marks in the dirt.
“There’s a cave up on a ledge about two miles below the rapids…a rock formation, more like. I want you to shelter there and wait for me. I’ll be a while, so you mustn’t worry. I’ll join you about midday. You wait there, do you hear? Don’t go out for anything. You’ve got the food. You’ve got a blanket. Sleep if you’ve a mind.”
“Where Ethancaine go?”
“I’m going to try to create a false trail. There’s a bit of a rock ford just above the rapids. I’ll take that across to the other side and head into the woods for a distance before doubling back. Hopefully, none of this will be necessary. But if they come after us, I’m counting on them picking up the false trail. At the worst, it’ll give us some time. At best, we’ll be free of them.”
“And if they not pick up false trail…?”
“We can’t worry about that. Now, we’d best get moving.” He rubbed out his scratchings and pushed himself up.
“Why you not let me go?” she said softly, staring at the remains of his crude map. He was at her side in an instant. “I am trouble for you.”
He slipped his hand under her chin and raised her face. He forced himself to smile. “I reckon I asked for it.”
* * *
At the fording place, Zara watched Ethancaine make his way across the river. He moved with a lithe grace as he hopped from rock to rock—some quite large, others perilously small. When he reached the opposite bank, he turned and raised his rifle above his head. A signal of his triumph, a last parting gesture to instill her with courage and confidence. And then he turned and ran, leaving her as alone as she had ever been.
Slick with ice and dampness, the rocks made the going slower than he had led her to believe. And slower still, as the bundle denied her the use of her hands. Ethan’s old greatcoat provided a further impediment, its heaviness weighing her down, its length dragging around her ankles. While he had walked at her side, the progress had been somewhat swifter. Now, she was forced to plan each and every step.
But she was grateful for the warmth the coat provided. Since the start of the day, the air had turned steadily colder and the wind had picked up out of the northeast. Although troubling, the change in the weather provided her with a grain of comfort. Perhaps the men from the settlement would abandon their pursuit.
Below the rapids, the terrain took on a different aspect. Where the shoreline had been jagged and steep, it now leveled off. The rocky bank afforded an easier footing, with smoother surfaces and, more often than not, stretches of soft earth. High above the now quietly flowing water, the hills rose to majestic heights, with facades of granite adorning bluffs covered with leafless trees interspersed with pine. She spied a well-worn trail cutting through a stand of hemlocks along the rocky slope.
She decided it would be more prudent to follow the path on the slope rather than chance leaving footprints along the sandy bank. Not only would she be able to walk at a faster pace, the trees would serve as a breaker against the wind and provide concealment from the shoreline below.
The climb was arduous and time-consuming. But once on the trail overlooking the water, she realized why Ethan had not mentioned the path. Immediately it struck her as an ideal route for men on horses traveling fast along the river. No sooner did she think it than a sound like a distant rolling thunder shattered the serenity of the slope. Somehow they had picked up her trail!
She looked around in a panic. On one side of the path the hill rose abruptly, a sheer-faced wall of granite with nowhere to hide and no way to climb to the summit. On the other side, the slope down to the water provided no quick and easy means of descent. There was only one option left open, and but one way to accomplish that end.
Without pausing to think, she tossed her bundle down the slope. Immediately she regretted her action, as it bounced and rolled among the rocks, until it found its way into the water. Having turned up the hem of the coat and tossed it over her shoulders so that it would not impede her, she glanced around for the best place to hide.
Choosing a tall, graceful hemlock with generous boughs, she burrowed through its thick clusters of soft evergreen needles, and climbed up into its sturdy branches.
She had barely settled herself into her hiding place, when three horsemen approached. Traveling at an easy pace, they took great pains to scour the trail for signs of her passage. One lagged behind the others, training an eye on the area below. They soon disappeared around a bend in the path.
Senses sharpened to the slightest sound, the minutest of movement, she listened. Somewhere farther along the trail, the men began shouting. She could not determine exactly what they said, but her heart sank. Had they had discovered the bundle drifting on the current? Soon they would alert the others. She waited, breathless, pressing herself down against the boughs.
An interminable interval passed as she sat huddled in the tree listening to the quarrelsome voices just ahead, her body tense, emotions jangling. She guessed they were trying to figure how to recover the pack. It surprised her when, some moments hence, they passed again in silence, their heads bowed.
Trembling relief poured through every vein.